UT philosophy professor Nolen Gertz to give talk on "Nihilism and Technology" at Cambridge University on 2 May

Artificial intelligence. Robot workers. Commercial space travel. These are no longer ideas found in sci-fi, but are increasingly the subject of headlines in the daily news. From Hollywood to Higher Ed, everyone is racing to figure out how to exploit these new technologies, how to use them to solve all our problems, especially the problems related to that other subject frequently found in the news: the climate change crisis.

Given the existential threat of environmental disaster, we now look to the technologies we once thought impossible to do the impossible, to save us from climate change. Of course looking to superhuman beings to save us from ourselves is nothing new. This is why turning to Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of nihilism can help us to understand our current predicament, to understand the danger of trying to escape from reality by embracing technological fantasies.

This updated edition expands the investigation into the relationship between nihilism and technology to include new topics like why AI doesn’t exist, why ChatGPT shouldn’t exist, and why climate change can’t be solved by nihilism.